Hola folks! I come bearing warm greetings in the time of chaos and disarray. Call me the ‘mood-switcher’, because I’m about to spill all the activities that has kept my mind running smoothly during this social distancing period. Hopefully these suggestions will come at ease for you as you try with your friends!
From the title, you can kind of guess what this post will be about: Friends- doing stuff together in the time of COVID-19 all thanks to the technological advancements that our generations have put forth, aka ZOOM!
Yes, that is correct! I am still hanging out with my homegirls (despite BellaNoches closing down, haha!)
If you’re in the need for some cheering up and gleeful experiences while staying indoors, I suggest you follow these next steps to maintaining great relationships with your friends while cherishing the ‘unforgettable’ moment that has brought you all together.
Since being inside, I have found ways, aside from staring outside of my window, to make use of the time and enjoy the moment despite it being so abnormal and unknown to my usual temperature.
My friends and I have introduced challenges to our routine. Instead of letting the 4 corners of our room close us in, we’ve chosen to push ourselves in a healthy direction for the sake of maintaining our sanity, happiness and friendship!
The first challenge we took on: Weekly Phone Calls. This one is extremely important to us because we found it vital in keeping up with each others’ lives. So about every Friday or Sunday evening, we facetime each other to catch up on the past week’s activities and occurrences. Checking-in is SO important because it sends the message that you care and you’re present. You’ll find that in any relationship, this is a facet of communication that carries a lot of weight and can influence the positivity and respect in the relationship.
Second Challenge: Meditation. If you’re like me, then much of being inside has welcomed emotions of anxiety and immobility with one’s aspirations. To temper and calm down the raging thoughts of unproductiveness and paradoxically feeling overwhelmed while being underwhelmed by the now unusual daily tasks, we’ve scheduled a daily meditation session after work. This allows us to decompress after what would be a stressful day.
Aside from maintaining our calmness and checking-in with each other, we also wanted to grow in our physical strength hence why we chose to participate in our Third Challenge: Exercise! We’ve taken on this new regiment that Sem suggested before challenging ourselves to do Chloe Ting’s Two Week Shred Challenge.
The pre-workout to the Challenge includes: 1,000 push ups, 1,000 squats, 1,000 sit-ups, 1,000 jumping jacks, 500 burpees, and 50 minutes worth of wall sits. The idea of this is to post where you are at the end of each day. Go at your own pace and take rest days when needed but the goal remains that at the end of the 2 weeks, you hit the target.
I’ve found this challenge most of all, to be the most rewarding activity in the bunch. Not only is it a great stress reliever but it keeps my energy high during the day and affords me an excuse to blast upbeat music (Zumba class playlist) in my house.
And lastly, a faith-based Challenge: YouVersion. As a hybrid byproduct of Christianity and Catholicism, it is essential to my spirituality that I remain close to my faith, especially now more than ever considering I physically cannot attend church service on Sunday’s or anyday for that matter.
D and Sem proposed that we, in order to grow stronger in our relationship with God and our friendships, participate in this lesson plan. Starting May 8th, we’ll read the Bible, discuss verses on relationships and friendship building and convene on our thoughts and reflections from the word!
I’m very excited to begin this plan and I hope that you too will consider giving one of these challenges a try! The best lesson to be learned from activities like these, is the lesson of discipline. We can all use a little more discipline in our daily routine, so why not give this try and become closer with your friends at the same time!
Tell me what have you guys been up to?? What challenges have kept you going?? Who knows- maybe there’s some more activities out there that I might fancy giving a try….
Till next time!
SIG
TIME WITH SIG 
I think my personal saving grace has been having structure around my life during this quarantine period. Without having regular calls with friends, mediation sessions, working out, work, spending time with family, and strengthening my faith/challenging my faith, I would just waste away with boredom!
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